Energy factoid: Your iPhone defaults to "clean energy" for recharging
Feeling guilty about charging your iPhone with electricity that may not be "clean"? Apple to the rescue. "Clean energy charging" was introduced in a recent update.
Most Apple iPhone owners are probably unaware that the environmentally conscious folks at Apple decided that YOU should prefer “clean” electricity to charge your iPhone. Starting with iOS 16.1, “your iPhone can try to reduce your carbon footprint by selectively charging when lower carbon-emission electricity is available,” says the app on your phone. When this feature is enabled, “your iPhone gets a forecast of the carbon emissions in your local energy grid and uses it to charge your iPhone during times of cleaner energy production.”
Apple does not provide any detail about how it gets this information from your local grid, but grid information is available from US power grids in real-time. For example, if you are in Texas, the ERCOT grid dashboard provides real-time information about how much wind, solar, natural gas, coal, and nuclear generated is being generated in real-time. Real-time data is also available for other power grids from the Energy Information Administration.
What if you are in an area that isn’t producing clean electricity, perhaps because the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining? No problem. Your iPhone will warn you and give you the option to override it and force it to recharge with whatever “unclean” electricity is generated. The penalty for doing this, if any, is not specified by Apple.
What constitutes “clean energy, you might ask?” Is it wind and solar only, or does it include natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel, or the ultimate clean electricity generated by nuclear? Apple doesn’t say.
Apple does give iPhone owners the option to turn off clean energy charging. Go to: Settings/Battery/Battery Health & Charging/Clean Energy Charging.
You will be happy to know that, and I am quoting here, “Your iPhone doesn’t send any of the location information that it uses for this feature to Apple,” or, I guess, how many times you override it and charge with dirty energy. At least not yet.